Most people have a very transactional relationship with Google. You ask it anything under the sun, and it comes back with the information you needed. You might sit back and marvel at how it works once in a while, but for the most part, we take it for granted.
Not 86-year-old grandma May Ashworth from England.
When she wanted to know how to translate MCMXVIII from roman numerals to decimal, she didn’t type in “translate MCMXVIII” into like some sort of uncouth peasant. Granny May was raised right, and perhaps more importantly, is delightfully British. This is what she told Google:
“Please translate these roman numerals MCMXVIIIÂ thank you”
The image was spotted by her 16 year old grandson who promptly put it on the internet as most 16-year-olds are wont to do. And the tweet went viral, notching up 30,000 retweets in 3 days. When contacted by reporters, it transpired that Granny May thought there was an actual person manning the Google search engine, and she thought that being polite would help her get her query answered faster.
All this didn’t go unnoticed at Google, who joined in with its official account.
Dear Grandma,
No thanks necessary. ?
Sincerely,
Googlehttps://t.co/vedrVek8nb— Google (@google) June 15, 2016
Among the millions of searches that power through Google every day, there’s still some that can make you go d’aww.